Richard Swinburne

Richard G. Swinburne (born December 26, 1934) is an eminent British professor and philosopher primarily interested in the philosophy of religion.

Christian apologetics

A member of the Greek Orthodox Church, he is noted as one of the foremost rational Christian apologists, arguing in his many articles and books that faith in Christianity is rational and coherent in a rigorous philosophical sense. While he presents many arguments to advance the belief that God exists, he argues that God is a being whose existence is not logically necessary (see modal logic), but metaphysically necessary in a way he defines in his The Christian God. Other subjects on which Swinburne writes include personal identity (in which he espouses a view based on the concept of a soul), and epistemic justification.

Though he is most well-known for his vigorous rational defense of Christian intellectual commitments, he also has a sensitive theory of the nature of passionate faith which is developed in his book Faith and Reason.

According to an interview Swinburne did with Foma magazine, he switched from the Church of England to the Eastern Orthodox Church around 1996:

I don’t think I changed my beliefs in any significant way. I always believed in the Apostolic succession: that the Church has to have its authority dating back to the Apostles, and the general teaching of the Orthodox Church on the saints and the prayers for the departed and so on, these things I have always believed.

Academic career

Swinburne has held various professorships through his career in academia, including from 1972 to 1985 at the Keele University. From 1982 to 1984 he gave the Gifford lectures at Aberdeen, resulting in the book The Evolution of the Soul. From 1985 until his retirement in 2002 he taught at the University of Oxford (where he now holds emeritus honors).

Swinburne has been a very active author throughout his career, producing a major book every two to three years. His books are primarily very technical works of academic philosophy, but he has written at the popular level as well. Of the non-technical works, his Is There a God? (1996), summarizing for a non-specialist audience many of his arguments for the existence of God and plausibility in the belief of that existence, is probably the most popular, and is available in translation in a dozen languages.

His works were influential in the conversion of prominent philosopher Antony Flew from atheism.

Major books

The Concept of Miracle, 1970
The Coherence of Theism, 1977
The Existence of God, 1979 (new edition 2004).
Faith and Reason, 1981
The Evolution of the Soul, 1986, ISBN 0198236980
Miracles, 1989.
Responsibility and Atonement, 1989
Revelation, 1991
The Christian God, 1994
Is There a God?, 1996, ISBN 0198235453
Simplicity as Evidence of Truth, The Aquinas Lecture, 1997
Providence and the Problem of Evil, 1998
Epistemic Justification, 2001
The Resurrection of God Incarnate, 2003

Spiritual autobiography

Richard Swinburne, "The Vocation of a Natural Theologian," in Philosophers Who Believe, Kelly James Clark, ed. (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1993), pp. 179-202.

Critical assessment

Colin Brown, Miracles and the Critical Mind (Exeter: Paternoster/Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1984), pp. 180-184.
Keith M. Parsons, God and the Burden of Proof: Plantinga, Swinburne, and the Analytic Defense of Theism (Buffalo: Prometheus, 1989).
Nicholas Wolterstorff, Divine Discourse: Philosophical reflections on the claim that God speaks (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).

External link

Personal Homepage at Oxford University - Includes a curriculum vitae and more complete list of publications